Chapter 3: Finding Humanity
Author's Note: I wrote this before Lucifer season 5 aired, and I never found the inspiration to finish it. I kept it, telling myself I'd complete it one day, but never did. I'm posting this incomplete chapter just so it's out there in the world for you to read, and I apologize that it leaves everything up in the air. The Fates are stubborn, but the Muses are fickle.
"My, my, if it isn't Clotho. To what do I owe the immense honour?" Charlie looked up from her tears and, to her shock, looked into the eyes of a fashionable man in a fashionable suit. Though Greece still surrounded the pair, her sisters were nowhere in sight. "You're a little shorter than the last time we met. I like the hair, though."
Charlie wiped away a tear and then slowly transformed back into her adult body. "Lucifer... what did you do to my sisters?" Though she was against everything they stood for and wanted nothing more than to ruin their plans, they were blood, and she didn't want them dead.
"Your sisters?" Lucifer scoffed. "They were never really here, Clotho. You're in hell, driven by guilt and pain, like an endless nightmare. Well, endless for most, but for a goddess, I can make an exception. Especially when I received word that someone was walking around killing demons."
"Then they don't have the ring?"
"What, the ring you gave me? This ring?" He held up his right hand and displayed the dark onyx stone, contrasting with its shining silver band, still firmly attached to his finger.
Charlie let out a sigh of relief. "Thank God," she said, ignoring his objection to the phrase ("I'd rather not, thanks"). "My friend Sara and I came here with some Detective who said she knew you because we need th—"
Lucifer's brow furrowed and he interrupted. "Did you say 'Detective'? She's here?"
"Yes, that's what I'm trying to tell you if you'd stop talking over me. We came to get the ring, but...stuff happened, and we got separated. I'm not sure where either of them are, but I think Chloe might have gone through some door. I was looking for her when you found me."
"No... no, no, NO!" Lucifer's eyes betrayed a mixture of fear and fury. "You brought the Detective here and let her get lost through a door? There is NOTHING good behind these doors, Clotho, I think you've learned that. She doesn't deserve... we need to find her."
"That's what I'm bloody saying, mate!" Charlie yelled in frustration. How could he have lived so long and still be so slow?
Without warning, Lucifer unfurled his shining wings, adding a majesty to his appearance that was rivaled only by his determined expression. He grabbed Charlie by the wrist and, in seconds, they were flying out the door back into the alleyway, then up past the stone walls. As he dangled her miles above the surface, keeping hold of her wrist only through his sheer supernatural strength, Charlie yelled up to him. "Dammit, Lucifer, you know I'm a shapeshifter, right?! LET GO!" She simultaneously grew wings to rival Lucifer's and shrunk her wrist enough to slip away from his grip. As she flew beside him, any human who might have seen it would have thought there were two angels flying through the night; but Lucifer paid no mind, and just kept soaring straight for the huge spire under the swirling stormclouds, atop which sat a very precarious throne.
"So this is the throne of hell, eh?" Charlie muttered to herself, admiring its architecture. It was perfectly designed, she realized, so that anyone without wings could never get near it, leaving its angelic monarch safe from mutiny. As long as they stayed on the throne, at least.
Charlie hovered next to the seat as Lucifer floated gracefully down into it. She could see his eyes glowing a firey red, and his skin began to shrivel and turn red as well. In the brief time they'd met so long ago, she'd only seen this face once, and she knew it meant Lucifer was beyond serious. He opened his mouth, and the words he spoke seemed to echo across the land, across all of hell at once. "There is a human here who does not belong!" Charlie held up two fingers, and Lucifer sighed. "Two humans who do not belong! The first demon to find them and tell me their location will have the distinct pleasure of being the one who stopped me from KILLING EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU! FIND THEM!" The command echoed for what felt like minutes before fading away.
Lucifer just sat, staring out across the vast infinity stone-faced, without saying a word. "Lucifer, I'm sure they're fine," Charlie said, trying to comfort him. He didn't reply, and didn't even look at her. "You really care about Chloe, don't you?"
"You have no idea," he said softly. "When I first met her, I knew she was special. Different. She made me vulnerable, literally, and I was intrigued to find the reason. The more time I spent with her, the more vulnerable I was, and it finally became clear why. For the first time in my life, I felt... deserving of something. Of being more than the cruel role my father made me play. I always told myself I wasn't that guy, the one everyone knew me to be, but deep down, I still thought I was. The Detective... she accepted me, eventually. She cared about me, she saw that I could be better. And I wanted to be better."
"That sounds like love, mate," Charlie said with a pensive smile. He just nodded, still staring off into the void.
A few minutes later, the tiny, distant voice of a demon made its way up the throne-spire. "My King! The humans have been found!" And without a second's hesitation, Lucifer swooped down at breakneck speed, and Charlie struggled to keep up.